Embrace your journey and those who come across your path. Be gracious in your endeavors. Focus on your craft. Those who support your dreams now and feel your sincere humility and gratitude will be there 20, 30, 40 years from now, padding your old bon...
Say it," she said. "Say it sober." "I love you," he said. "I don't want you to say it back unless you mean it, but I love you." She leaned back over him, and pressed the pads of her fingertips against his. "I mean it.
Marko pressed the creased paper flat against the note stand, rested the pads of his fingers lightly over the top of the keys and began to play. I watched him at first, my eyes drinking in the gorgeous sight that was Marko lost inside his head, but th...
Must be weird for you, having your mom here." "Weird for me, weird for her, probably weird for you since you had to give up your swinging bachelor pad." "Mrs. Casnoff let me install my heart-shaped Jacuzzi in my new dorm room." "Cal," I said with moc...
The ritual worked. That is the most ghastly thing. I hold no particular brief for the rationality of the world, but that this vile obscenity should actually have the power to bring back the dead seems to me not merely a sign that the world is not rat...
This was awkward to infinity. Alex living here would change my entire routine. I was sharing a bathroom with my boyfriend. How scary was that? I had tampons and pads and everything in there. He was going to be naked in the shower on the other side of...
If you could imagine the color of anger, it had been splashed over every wall. Rage, something dense and seething, was hanging from every chandelier, resentment woven into thick carpets padding the room, hatred flickering underneath every lampshade. ...
I always think I know the way a novel will go. I write maps on oversized art pads like the kind I carried around in college when I was earnest about drawing. I need to have some idea of the shape of the novel, where its headed, so that I can proceed ...
This singularity of meaning--I was my face, I was ugliness--though sometimes unbearable, also offered a possible point of escape. It became the launching pad from which to lift off, the one immediately recognizable place to point to when asked what w...
The truest art I would strive for in any work would be to give the page the same qualities as earth: weather would land on it harshly, light would elucidate the most difficult truths; wind would sweep away obtuse padding. Finally, the lessons of impe...
The library was a little old shabby place. Francie thought it was beautiful. The feeling she had about it was as good as the feeling she had about church. She pushed open the door and went in. She liked the combined smell of worn leather bindings, li...
As he returned to the bed, he could see Vallant eyeing him warily, but he ignored this, sat on the opposite end and braced the pad on his knee. He ripped off the page and handed it over, but he began a second note even before Vallant had taken the fi...
Who taught you to write in blood on my back? Who taught you to use your hands as branding irons? You have scored your name into my shoulders, referenced me with your mark. The pads of your fingers have become printing blocks, you tap a message on to ...
My skin hungered for you. You were warm, and alive, and in my bed, and I wanted you so bad I could feel the ripple of need on the pads of my fingertips, on the palms of my hands, on the skin of my back, at the base of my cock, inside my ass— I want...
His gaze, blunted by the unnumbered procession of iron bars, uncounted as his softly padded steps. Smooth motion of blood and sinew turning in its own, small circle prescribed by bars and walls ...and skin, confined. Suddenly, without warning, a flas...
If I feel good about my parenting, I have no interest in judging other people's choices. If I feel good about my body, I don't go around making fun of other people's weight or appearance. We're hard on each other because we're using each other as a l...
My coming to faith did not start with a leap but rather a series of staggers from what seemed like one safe place to another. Like lily pads, round and green, these places summoned and then held me up while I grew. Each prepared me for the next leaf ...
One ritual is that I don't speak to anyone before I write in the morning. I like to get to my desk before I say anything out loud. And I use everything I dreamed the night before. I work on a computer, but I also work almost as much in longhand on ye...
My heart is tortured for love. For a being of essence locked away from my heart. A padded room locks away these feelings. Convoluted love that has me convinced it’s worth my last breathe to share a moment…one moment in her lifetime. I am trapped ...
Ehimlite universities are strong at delivering their commercial mission. They are pretty strong in developing their cognitive mission. But when it comes to the sort of growth Deresiewicz is talking about, everyone is on their own. An admissions offic...
There were no laptops or handheld devices in class. Ilgauskas didn't exclude them; we did, sort of, unspokenly. Some of us could barely complete a thought without touch pads or scroll buttons, but we understood that high-speed data systems did not be...
